Turn Around (But Nothing's There)

Disclaimer: I own nothing except these words.

Summary: Klaus pays a visit to Elena before leaving town in 3x05 to discuss their future.

Spoilers: Everything through 3x06.

Rating: PG

Warnings: Can't think of any!

Contrary to rumor, he doesn't leave town the moment that insufferable Salvatore mentions Mikael's name. Arrangements have to be made, watches set, and punishments meted out. And then, of course, he must pay a visit to his girl.

Klaus comes upon her as she steps out onto the back porch of her house.

"Hello, Elena."

She rewards him with a delicious shutter before she whirls to face him.

"What do you want?" she snaps when he steps out of the shadows. Despite the confidence in her voice, she's all false-fire. He can hear the way her heart thunders in her chest, can see the delicate veins throbbing violently against her pulse-points.

"I've come to say good-bye."

Moonlight glimmers over her skin. In the dark, her eyes are like two deep ponds as she stares at him in clear bewilderment.

"Good-bye?" She rolls the phrase over in her mouth like she doesn't understand it.

"Yes. I'm leaving town for the time being, and I thought it only meet that I should stop by for a word with you first."

Suspicion plays across her mouth, and, young as she is, she doesn't bother to school her features before she asks, "A word about what?"

"I wanted to be certain you wouldn't try to run while I'm gone."

"Have I ever run from you?" There's a hint of defiance in the set of her jaw that he remembers from the night he drained her.

He steps toward her, crowds her close enough against the side of her house to sip the air from her lungs as he whispers against the scar he left her last spring, "No, I suppose you haven't."

"Then we're finished here." She tries to move past him, but he blocks her by pressing his palm against the house, inches from her face.

"Not quite."

Uncertainty blooms across her features. "I already told you I won't run…"

"Elena, Elena," he half-sings as he tastes the weight of her name on his tongue. "There's just one small thing else—"

He leans forward and catches her mouth against his.

Elena doesn't respond at all how he had imagined she might. She neither slaps him away nor answers in kind. Instead, she wilts beneath his hands, suffused with listless compliance.

Frustrated, he redoubles his efforts. He plumbs her mouth, strokes the side of her tongue, the delicate ridges in the roof of her mouth, with his own. He crushes her against him, hooks one of her legs high against his hip as he grazes his nails along the back of one tanned thigh.

At length, she sighs, nothing but a little bubbling in the base of her throat, and responds to the pressure of his kiss with an ardor increasingly less faint.

He pulls back just as Elena opens herself to him.

"I'll be back for you soon, sweetheart." He drops the words for her as a parting gift as he backs off of her porch. His eyes dart to the bruise flowering against her lips, to the milky scar that arches up the side of her neck. "Don't get too cozy without me."

Elena stands absolutely still, caught under his gaze like a beetle in amber.

His girl doesn't say a word as he slips into the night. He has never seen her so quiet. But then, he hasn't seen much of Elena at all. He intends to mend that soon.

A/N: I just had to write something after seeing 3x05, and this is what came of it. I hope you've enjoyed it!